Smart people saying smart things

Phoenix’s pyramid of complexities looks shakier than most because it stands squarely in the crosshairs of climate change. The area, like much of the rest of the American Southwest, is already hot and dry; it’s getting ever hotter and drier, and is increasingly battered by powerful storms. Sandy and Katrina previewed how coastal cities can expect to fare as seas rise and storms strengthen. Phoenix pulls back the curtain on the future of inland empires. If you want a taste of the brutal new climate to come, the place to look is where that climate is already harsh, and growing more so – the aptly named Valley of the Sun.

When you sit down for your beautiful Pesach meal, be conscious that slavery wasn’t just what (might have) happened to the Israelites in ancient Egypt. It isn’t just a shameful American legacy. It’s something that still happens, in a variety of ways. Our people’s central story holds that we were slaves to a Pharaoh in Egypt but our God brought us out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. It’s our job to be the mighty hands and outstretched arms which will free those who are enslaved today.

A political party is a type of brand name. It signals meaning and values to its members on overt, implied, and implicit levels. By example, if “Honda” or “Toyota” signal “reliability” to their buyers, “Tea Party” and “Republican” signals “white” and “whiteness” to the American public. The latter signal is heard by supporters and opponents of the Tea Party GOP. The racism of the Tea Party GOP is not a dog-whistle. It is an air raid siren. And until the Republicans can learn to mute its klaxon they will continue the slide towards political obsolescence.

“It wasn’t violent,” explained teammate Evan Westlake when asked why he didn’t stop the two defendants as they abused a non-moving girl that Westlake knew to be highly intoxicated. “I always pictured it as forcing yourself on someone.”

That was part of the arrogance.

Arrogance from the defendants. Arrogance from the friends. Arrogance within the culture.

Arrogance based on the fact that this night, witnesses testified over and over, wasn’t strikingly different than any other night in the life of a Big Red football player.

I posted this story to my Facebook the other day. One of my conservative followers basically replied with “Nuh uh, and liberals are racist too!”

http://anonsam.wordpress.com/ AnonymousSam

Every time someone says that, when I ask them to elaborate, they point at the Democrat party of the 1800’s. >.>

The_L1985

Because political parties don’t change in 150 years. Never mind that the Whig party was once a major party, and it existed for less than a century.

LoneWolf343

I did. I haven’ t look at his reply yet, because goddammit, I have trouble dealing with that kind of stupid.

Though I did say that Dixiecrats don’t count.

http://twitter.com/FearlessSon FearlessSon

Ironically, that was the point of the CPAC panel in question. The guy hosting it was promoting himself as a “Frederick Douglass Republican”, and reminding people that it was a group of Democrats who created the KKK.

Of course, that was a long time ago, and demographics and priorities or both parties have shifted considerably since then.

Becca Stareyes

There almost certainly are some racist liberals. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t criticize racist conservatives, especially when the modern Republican Party seems to be keeping the thinnest of veneers of deniability about their courtship of them.

http://twitter.com/FearlessSon FearlessSon

I would prefer to call out racists in general, regardless of their political affiliation.

However, I will call out party platform or policies if I feel like they are courting or promoting racists. The racists are idiots and no party should be seeking votes from them.

Let them whither into frustrated impotence as a voting block.

The_L1985

So…his defense was “We’re not racist, and liberals are too?” Cognitive dissonance much?

According to Gawker, Ma’lik’s attorney has announced plans to repeal the verdict, because he shouldn’t have to spend the rest of his life on a sex offender list since “his brain isn’t fully developed.”

I have mixed feelings about a life-long condemnation to a list, but this kid knew full well what he was doing. He and his buddy spent several days afterward trying to convince the victim that nothing actually happened. And that’s just the least triggering detail of what happened. At the very least, he deserves to sit in prison for awhile. All the sympathy he’s getting, all the whining about his life and career being ruined…Fuck that.

LMM22

All the sympathy he’s getting, all the whining about his life and career being ruined…Fuck that.

The common liberal meme is that we should assume some of the blame, because, hey, rape culture, we haven’t *taught* them that rape is wrong, etc., etc., etc.

I think that that’s the wrong approach to be taking. I can’t change pop culture. I can’t make sure the parents of a would-be-sociopath teach him to respect women. I can’t even dismantle a high school football team that teaches its players that they are gods.

Here’s *my* meme: What we’re to blame for here is teaching them that, for them, rape has no consequences.

I don’t want reduced misogyny in the media. (Well, I do, but that’s beside the point.) I want a sky-high conviction rate for rapists. Barring that, I want one stipulation of their release to be that they film a PSA for football players documenting everything that they will be missing out on because they chose to rape someone. (Speaking tour would be a bonus.)

http://dpolicar.livejournal.com/ Dave

“The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now.”

We didn’t fix the culture twenty years ago, so the best we can do now is criminal justice.

So we should ensure criminal justice.

We should also fix the culture.

LMM22

That’s not quite my point. Getting people not to rape because they see rape as wrong would be ideal. But that’s difficult — not the least because (as most studies have shown) we *aren’t* dealing with a diffuse culture of ‘toxic masculinity’ but with a relatively small population of repeat offenders. (*)

In the absence of that, then, I will settle for the more base motive of getting people not to rape because raping someone has criminal consequences.

As an analogy: The culture of Wall Street is generally acknowledged to be toxic. Enron, Goldman Sacks, all the other high-frequency traders — they’ve lost money and screwed people over time and time again. No one is going on about “changing the culture” on Wall Street. No one thinks that the solution is ethics courses for finance classes. Rather, the general consensus is that, if we want things to change, then we need to make sure that people on Wall Street are prosecuted, particularly for acts which are *already* blatantly illegal.

The culture on Wall Street isn’t toxic because the traders don’t care about people. They don’t, but that’s not the reason any of them do what they do. The culture is toxic because the younger people see that they can commit blatantly illegal acts and not get caught.

(*) Recidivism of sex offenders is generally claimed to be quite low (c.a. 5%?). But the rates of conviction are *equally* low — so low that the stats, AFAICT, are virtually useless.

http://dpolicar.livejournal.com/ Dave

In case I wasn’t clear about this earlier, I absolutely endorse enforcing criminal consequences for rape.

I continue to disagree with the idea that we ought do nothing about the culture, but if discussing cultural problems in this exchange will be interpreted as somehow lessening my support for enforcing criminal consequences for rape (which is what seems to be happening ) then I’ll happily stop discussing cultural problems here.

Lori

not the least because (as most studies have shown) we *aren’t* dealing with a diffuse culture of ‘toxic masculinity’ but with a relatively small population of repeat offenders.

There are a lot of problems with these studies, not least of which is the difficulty getting good data to work with. We need to be really, really careful when evaluating them and when using them to draw conclusions that go beyond the data set.

http://blog.trenchcoatsoft.com Ross

because they chose to rape someone

I think that framing the thing society needs to do as “teaching men not to rape” or “teachin because they chose to rape someoneg men that rape is wrong” is true, but may be misleading. Because I think surveys are fairly consistent that most men actually do think they know rape is wrong. The place where it all breaks down is that an awful lot of them don’t actually understand what “consent” means. Those two young rapists even now don’t seem to actually comprehend that the thing they did was rape. We teach young men “Don’t rape” and then go out of our way to make sure that we give them a confused, contradictory and misleading understanding of what that actually entails, in what I suspect is a deliberate attempt to create little mental checkboxes that lead men to think that if they can just avoid hitting the right combination of checkboxes, then it’s “not rape”.

And you end up with two high school football players who are trying to wrap their minds around the fact that they thought they’d left the right checkboxes blank, and even now, they think the problem must be that there were some checkboxes they didn’t know about or something. Because it never occurred to them that it isn’t about whether they lurked in a dark alley or whether they used force or whether they personally drugged the victim, but rather what makes it rape is that they chose to rape someone — that is, they made the decision that her consent didn’t matter. That’s what we don’t teach, that what makes it rape isn’t any particular detail or set of details about how it went down, what makes it rape is the decision.

LMM22

Because I think surveys are fairly consistent that most men actually do think they know rape is wrong…. Those two young rapists even now don’t seem to actually comprehend that the thing they did was rape.

I’ve read otherwise. (Yes, it’s limited evidence. But there’s limited evidence in both directions, and, honestly, I’m inclined the believe the data that I’m given more than the assumptions that I’m not.)

I for one don’t believe the two men at all. I don’t think they didn’t know what they were doing, both based upon their subsequent behavior (*) and based upon the reactions of the people around them.

But let’s assume they didn’t know. Let’s assume they’d be *so* contrite once they realized that what they did was rape. That still doesn’t change the message.

When I was in my teens, we had to watch a video profiling a young man who killed someone while drunk driving. We saw him in prison. We saw him torn up over what he did. We saw the consequences of his actions. I say we do the same to football players today.

(*) I’m an Aspie. I can hurt other people emotionally — seriously hurt other people — without realizing it. Once I do, though, I feel *incredibly* guilty. I don’t argue that what I did wasn’t wrong — not after thinking about it. If they actually *cared* that they hurt someone, even if they disputed the term, they wouldn’t behave the way they do.

http://blog.trenchcoatsoft.com Ross

I’ve read otherwise. (Yes, it’s limited evidence. But there’s limited evidence in both directions, and, honestly, I’m inclined the believe the data that I’m given more than the assumptions that I’m not.)

I have heard both things.

But let’s assume they didn’t know. Let’s assume they’d be *so* contrite once they realized that what they did was rape. That still doesn’t change the message.

I don’t think they’ll ever be contrite, because I don’t think they’ll ever realize what they did, because even now, society has no real interest in teaching them. They’re going to go to their graves thinking that, sure, what they did was maybe wrong, but that it’s not like it was “rape rape.” They’re going to go through life being at best genuinely befuddled as to why they’ve been punished (more likely, they’ll go through life resentful of an unfair system that treated them as the rapists they were when “all they did” was some kind of “youthful indescretion”)

LMM22

I don’t think they’ll ever be contrite, because I don’t think they’ll ever realize what they did, because even now, society has no real interest in teaching them.

Really? After seeing the girl sobbing in court? After seeing the public reaction to their atrocious behavior?

They knew what they did was wrong. They might not have known it was rape (though I think their Twitter feeds tell us otherwise), but they knew to hide their involvement once she realized that something happened.

At this point in time, I *am* reading you advocating ‘social change’ as objecting to criminal involvement, because, unless they’ve been raised by cavemen, these *men* — these *rapists* — knew what they did was wrong.

I don’t think they’ll ever be contrite because I think they’re both sociopaths.

My statement that repentance would start with a *long* PSA and a state-mandated speaking tour is much lighter than my alternative, which is that we can tell that they (like *all* sexual predators) are not contrite because they’re not dead.

http://blog.trenchcoatsoft.com Ross

Of course they know what they did was wrong. What they have no sense of is why it was wrong. From their perspective, what they did wrong was that they “cheated”: they got sex without “earning it” — they’ve been raised to view sex as a sort of business transaction: they put in effort in certain forms, and are “paid” in sex. They know that they did wrong by gaming that system. That’s the disconnect: they think that what they did is wrong the same way that not paying a prostitute is wrong. Because the concept of consent isn’t something they understand. It would never occur to them that a woman has some agency to make decisions about the disposition of her own body.

I’m not willing to just dismiss these two as having brains that work differently and wash my hands, say “Well, some people are just born evil. Too bad we can’t just have them put down like dogs.” I don’t think they’re sociopaths. I think they’ve been trained not to think of sex in terms of mutual consent but as a sort of business transaction, and therefore they don’t think of what they did as a violation of consent, but as a kind of sexual shoplifting.

LMM22

I don’t think they’re sociopaths.

I guess that’s where we’re going to differ, then, because if they haven’t learned now, they never will.

I don’t want them to get the death penalty. I want them to take responsibility for their actions — and *that* means shame to the point of suicide.

http://apocalypsereview.wordpress.com/ Invisible Neutrino

They knew what they did was wrong. They might not have known it was rape (though I think their Twitter feeds tell us otherwise), but they knew to hide their involvement once she realized that something happened.

And a dog knows to hide if its owner starts doing angry-human things. That doesn’t mean the dog knows how to make the connection between barfing up on the carpet and then 8 hours later getting yelled at.

Some humans will in all honesty believe they deserve no blame for Thing Y and still be just aware enough to know to muddy the tracks when they get told later it’s not such a shit-hot idea.

LMM22

That doesn’t mean the dog knows how to make the connection between barfing up on the carpet and then 8 hours later getting yelled at.

So what? We just need to give them a nice ethics course and they’re realize the error of their ways?

Do you *really* think the culture they were raised in is *so* toxic that they’re incapable of understanding that dragging a naked girl around and assaulting her is wrong? Particularly when they did so as *revenge* for her breaking up with another member of the football team?

I’m seeing multiple people make the argument that the problem is that we’re just not *willing* to teach them that what they did is wrong. That the problem is that we’re just not *willing* to teach them to sympathize with the person they hurt instead of feeling sorry for their miserable lives. That all we need to do is work on a utopian vision of transformative justice and everything will be wonderful again.

You know who else doesn’t understand that what they did was wrong? Wall Street bankers. The CEOs at Enron. The heads of Goldman Sacks and the other financial firms that brought down the economy. And the crimes they committed weren’t violent: They may have ruined lives, but there is no chance that they could go out and repeat their actions were they (say) a checker at a local grocery store. We don’t have to trust that they won’t assault someone else one night. We just have to make sure they’re not heads of a company. If we stop believing in punishment and simply want re-education, all we’d need to do is make sure all those executives work at a soup kitchen and are never allowed to work at anything other than an entry-level job again.

Yet somehow it’s the rapists we’re supposed to believe are redeemable. The men who can commit the same crime again easily, without anyone finding out about it. The men who could repeat their same actions *anywhere*, in any city or town or suburb, while holding any job. The men who commit a crime that is so underreported that we don’t have any good statistics on whether or not convicted sex offenders are likely to rape someone again. The men who commit a crime that is just as likely to not be punished as the CEOs who stole money from everyone else.

And I’m going to stick to my original argument: Lynch mobs weren’t ended because everyone suddenly realized that black people were human. That took a long time. Lynch mobs stopped because the people involved knew they would be punished.

Right. But what’s the general reaction to that? It’s not “change the culture.” Nobody feels like any of those killers are redeemable. It’s “find the bastards and punish them.”

http://blog.trenchcoatsoft.com Ross

Where do you get the idea that anyone is calling to “redeem” them? No one’s said that. I don’t want to “redeem” lynch mobs and I don’t want to “redeem” those two young men who raped that young woman. I want to fix the fucking system that did not just make those people commit those crimes, but encouraged them to become the sort of people who commit those crimes.

http://apocalypsereview.wordpress.com/ Invisible Neutrino

So what? We just need to give them a nice ethics course and they’re realize the error of their ways?

Did you read the part after that?

Where I pointed out that even if people don’t think they did anything wrong, they ARE canny enough to pick up that there are noises of disapproval and will try to work to blunt the impact?

LMM22

Yes, I did. You’ve failed to answer my question: How do you teach them that they *raped* someone, if they’ve failed to learn that by now?

Or, to put it another way: Is there *any* way you can think of educating them such that you would feel comfortable leaving them alone with your daughter? Because I can’t.

http://apocalypsereview.wordpress.com/ Invisible Neutrino

I’m sorry, are you actually asking questions or do you just want to vent spleen?

Because it feels to me like the latter more than the former.

I have never said they should not be punished for their actions.

But maybe, unfortunately, the very fact of jailing them will be the only way to teach them that what they did is wrong.

LMM22

But maybe, unfortunately, the very fact of jailing them will be the only way to teach them that what they did is wrong.

That is my point. And, honestly, until it *does*, I don’t think they should be released.

http://anonsam.wordpress.com/ AnonymousSam

They knew. They were calling it rape at the time. They just laughed and thought it sounded like a good thing. Several sites make reference to someone laughing and uttering the words “She is so raped.”

Making me wonder if it really isn’t that toxic in adolescent land nowadays…

LMM22

Thank you. I’ve been trying to say that and everyone is pretending otherwise.

http://blog.trenchcoatsoft.com Ross

You seem very locked in on the idea that people are saying things they’re not saying. You’ve responded to more than one person talking about these men’s comprehension of rape as if we were saying that they didn’t think that they did anything wrong and you’ve responded to any attempt to claim these men are anything other than Just Born Evil as if we’re saying they’re not culpable for their actions or shouldn’t be punished.

You also said that these criminals should be “shamed to suicide.” That’s not the act of a just system, it’s the act of a fucking bully.

LMM22

You also said that these criminals should be “shamed to suicide.” That’s not the act of a just system, it’s the act of a fucking bully.

No, I didn’t. I never said that we as a culture should shame them. I said that they — as people who have grown up in a culture — should feel ashamed to the point where they commit suicide. They should not be able to live with their guilt. (Imagine if you ran over your child. Imagine if you accidentally shot your sibling. Now imagine you did that intentionally. That’s the level of guilt they should be experiencing. They should be groveling for forgiveness. They should be having nightmares at night. They should feel unable to show their face in public again. They should have turned themselves into the police.)

They don’t. That, as far as I am concerned, makes them irredeemable.

Lauren

There have been a few studies done that suggest that rapists are fairly willing to admit that they’ve forced people to have sex with them, as long as the “r” word isn’t invoked (Lisak and Miller, and McWhorter’s studies come to mind).

I don’t know if this means that these men know they were doing something wrong though, since we live in a culture that so heavily glamorizes male sexuality and aggression. But it is worth pointing out that these men are willing to admit that coercion was involved, and that they’re not fooling themselves into thinking that it was a case of “poor communication”, “accidental rape”, or whatever.

banancat

There have been other studies that show rapists think all men are rapists (or at least want to be, but aren’t brave enough to risk it). They think that most men do it or want to do it but are just better at getting away with it. So most rapists probably don’t view it as wrong except in some vague sense that they know society technically disapproves.

http://apocalypsereview.wordpress.com/ Invisible Neutrino

There’s a difference between acknowledging that teenagers will tend to undertake riskier behaviors on average plus maybe lack judgement about things, and not absolving them of knowing the difference between right and wrong.

AnonaMiss

Phoenix – especially its suburbs – is famously full of asshats who consider sacred their right to green lawns and a swimming pool in every pot backyard, while criminalizing leaving water in the desert to save the lives of “illegals”. It’s a city full of every “Arizona Republican” stereotype, without the excuse of rural isolation/tradition, and with absolute gobs of money.

They deserve their environmental catastrophe and if it is (as I believe) inevitable, I only hope it reaches a critical point soon enough that McCain hasn’t retired yet, so that when he comes begging for aid the legislature can stuff his ‘No” vote on Sandy relief so far down his throat that he chokes on it.

No city deserves the Sodom treatment, but Phoenix comes closest.

LMM22

It’s not the asshats. It’s not that the people in Phoenix are any more sinful than anyone else. That would be the wrong way of thinking about it.

It’s that Phoenix, like Dubai, like other ‘modern’ cities, is founded on a modern form of hubris: the idea that human beings, human planners, human consumers, can do whatever they want to, because, no matter how bad the situation gets, science will fix it.

And, as best they can, researchers and engineers try to. But natural laws are natural laws — and if water isn’t available in the middle of a desert, it’s not going to be available, let alone in enough quantities to supply the lifestyles that people are used to.

If you want to see this in action, read _Cadillac Desert_. It’s old now, but it’s good. (The first two thirds are really interesting but dry (no pun intended). Somewhere around WWII, Reisner gives up and starts mocking all of the major participants and then it becomes hilarious.)

AnonaMiss

My observation that Phoenix is full of assholes who deserve it is not entirely based on the linked article. I went to college in Tucson, the one of the two major liberal enclaves of Arizona. (The other is Flagstaff). I met enough Phoenician asshats to last a lifetime. The worst were the ones from Scottsdale.

Tucson is also a good example of how you can do better at living in the desert than Phoenix does, environmentally speaking. For example, natural landscaping is a Thing there; and even if you’re not into landscaping, the default “lawn” covering is gravel, not grass. Open air pools are much rarer; buildings, including their roofs, tend to be painted light colors or made of tin to better reflect light; swamp coolers are a common and much less expensive method of cooling than AC; etc. It’s still guzzling water faster than is sustainable, but it’s a damn sight better than Phoenix.

http://twitter.com/FearlessSon FearlessSon

I have been to Tucson a few times for the gem show. I saw the landscaping there. The ten to twenty feet tall cacti were nice, I liked the “forest” of them on a hill. Apparently some people use them for target practice? The palm trees though look like they could use a drink. Right heat for them, wrong humidity.

One of the things that surprised me most though was the building construction. A lot of very low density, low cost construction, at least where I was (which was admittedly most near the airport and air force base where land is presumably cheapest in an already land-inexpensive area.) I would have expected to see a lot more heat-chimneys, and high-albedo surfaces for energy-efficiency.

glendanowakowsk

When’s the next Friday the 13th? Frederick Douglass is going to be one very busy ghost.

http://loosviews.livejournal.com BringTheNoise

The thing that depresses me most about Steubenville is not what happened itself (not to downplay it – it’s horrifying and terrible), but the amount of victim blaming from supposed adults going around. Not just the usual “Drinking = asking for it” horseshit, but also repeated claims that this was “crying rape” after the video came out and even demands for the victim to be prosecuted for underage drinking, because that’s the REAL crime. Ugh. Just, ugh.

There’s a round-up of some of the Tweets and Facebook posts expressing this EVIL, poisonous opinion at http://publicshaming.tumblr.com/ but TRIGGER WARNING: Rape, Victim Blaming, Misogyny – and on other topics, Racism, Homophobia and basically everything else you can think of.

The_L1985

And let’s not forget how the news is going on and on about how the rapists’ lives were ruined. What about the damn victim?

http://loosviews.livejournal.com BringTheNoise

What about the damn victim? What’s she got to do with it? She didn’t even PLAY football![/misogynist]

Baby_Raptor

Did you note how Fox News released her name (and were the first ones to do so), but made a statement about how they refused to release the rapists’ names (that were already all over the media) “because they respect the privacy of children?”

The victim doesn’t even exist to some people. She’s a complete non-entity.

The_L1985

That’s absolutely disgusting. They respect the privacy of children who rape, but not of children who are raped. How can you even say something like that with a straight face on national TV?

http://blog.trenchcoatsoft.com Ross

In addition to all the other issues going on here, this also points to one of the big pathologies of the modern news cycle. There’s a strong bias toward having a victim the media can emote over. They want to show us a victim and tell us about a villain. Since the media doesn’t have access to the actual victim, they try to make the rapists into “victims” of a villainous “system”, because that makes a better narrative for them to sell.

Abby Normal

That’s what gets me about this–in what universe is a normal response to someone who is passed out **unconcious** to treat them in this manner? It’s like saying that it’s okay to diddle a coma patient. Only a complete sociopath thinks that it’s okay to take advantage of someone that’s totally incapacitated–regardless of how they got that way.

http://anonsam.wordpress.com/ AnonymousSam

Some complete sociopaths think their actions were unforgivable, too.

Kirala

Can someone formulate a term for people who CHOOSE to treat other human beings as things? Because we do abuse the clinical term “sociopath” when we use it that way – obviously, some sociopaths adhere to ethics despite lacking natural empathy, and some people seem to expend a lot of energy suppressing or destroying their natural empathy so as to enable them to seek their own profit at the expense of others.

So what term shall we employ to refer to those whose lack of empathy is an act of will, rather than innate nature? Because somehow “evil” seems overly vague.

http://anonsam.wordpress.com/ AnonymousSam

For what it’s worth, I think it’s more sensible to have a different term for people like me than to change the term for people like them. Their behavior is sociopathic in nature, even if they’re not legitimately diagnosed APD cases.

http://dpolicar.livejournal.com/ Dave

I dunno. “Evil” seems like a pretty good term to use here to me.

aunursa

Slavery Was Good For the Blacks: At CPAC Angry “Disenfranchised” White Men Are the Real Face of the Tea Party GOP

Big Media and leftists (sorry for the redundancy) came to CPAC with an agenda, and high on the list was proving how racist CPAC is…

At most you might [judge the group in the room] if you were foolish enough to believe Think Progress’s claim: “Several people in the audience cheered and applauded Terry’s outburst.” Immediately after making that claim, Think Progress embeds a video that gives the lie to their description…THE RACISMS AT CPAC!!!

http://loosviews.livejournal.com BringTheNoise

“We’re not racist! The racist leader of the a racist group within our party didn’t get cheered in public!” That’s not exactly a defence. Especially not at a “Trump The Race Card” panel.

Carstonio

The concept of the “race card” involves assumptions that could justifiably be called racist. It wrongly focuses on the alleged motives of the person allegedly being targeted by the card. It treats being accused of racism as worse than actual racism. It defines racism as individual prejudice instead of systemic discrimination and skin-based privilege. It implies that whites who condemn racism or act to reduce it are motivated only by guilt or intimidation.

The real “race card” is what Molly Ivins called “going mean on race,” or the Southern Strategy.

Lori

There’s never a good excuse for fluffing a story, but this was one where there was no need in any sense. The reality was more than bad enough. Putting the video and transcript up without comment was all the was required.

http://apocalypsereview.wordpress.com/ Invisible Neutrino

Whenever I see/hear “race card” I know it’s gonna be some clueless white guy who thinks racism is like a Magic The Gathering game.

I mean, really, CPAC? “trumping” a race card?

This isn’t some goddamn bridge game. This is real people we are discussing here!

Baby_Raptor

“Big Media and the leftists (sorry for the redundancy)…”

Man, you’ve got to stop using disproved lies and strawmen if you want real debate.

Lori

What has he ever posted that made you think he wants real debate?

http://thatbeerguy.blogspot.com Chris Doggett

“Big Media and leftists (sorry for the redundancy) came to CPAC with an agenda… a recent story that is all over the liberal blogs…”

Got that? Liberal blogs = Big Media! I had no idea!

So evidently the story is a white man spoke, saying several racist things, and a black woman tried to ask questions but was not allowed.

According to the blog post linked, this white man was allowed to speak, at length, saying racist things, and this black woman was not allowed to speak, but that doesn’t prove anything because… umm… hey, look over there!

From the linked piece, a statement by the author:I’m sick of a point of view where parties see voters as customers who are always right, and have to be recruited or catered to.

Got that? The author is sick of the view that voters need to be catered to! Political parties shouldn’t have to earn the votes of members and constituents! They should just, what? Obey their betters?

Aunursa, will you ever try arguing in good faith?

Carstonio

To hear K. Carl Smith, one would think that the GOP was like General Foods fighting the Pop Rocks urban legend, or Proctor and Gamble defamed by fundamentalist demagogues. He treats the distrust by non-whites as simply a branding and marketing problem. His proposed solution is merely an elaborate version of “Some of my best friends are black.” As if they would say, “Oh, Douglass was one of us, so these folks must be okay.” The fact that Smith is black doesn’t change the patronizing nature of his strategy.

Numerous commentators have been pushing versions of Smith’s advice since November. Non-whites would support us and our ideology, they say, if we could just deliver our message the right way and bypass the nasty media. To take this at face value, one would have to assume that these people have been asleep for the last 40 years. A political party spends decades trying to reverse the gains made during the civil rights struggle, undermining any program aimed at increasing equality of opportunity, and generally pandering to white resentment, and then asks why it does so poorly among non-whites. The ideological version of Norma Desmond still believing she has hordes of fans who crave her return to the screen.

misanthropy_jones

wow. who’d have guessed that yahoo sports reporters have a better grasp of the reality of rape than cnn?

Apparently, even female reporters can ignore the true victims of rape while lionizing and martyring the false ones. When men do this, at least they seem to be protecting their privilege, probably fearing they’l be accused of rape themselves.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001112204188 Gabe Nichols

In response to the second piece, from my family’s Haggadah, we tinker with the words each year but the sentiment always remains

THE WATCH NIGHT OF THE ETERNAL

In many lands, men and women have groaned under the burdens of malice, ignorance, and greed. This very night, which we celebrate so securely and joyfully here, is even now a night of suffering and anxiety for many sisters and brothers, across the world and in this very city. Some are hungry, some lonely, some in exile, some in captivity. Some are “illegal”, and live furtively among us, easy targets for exploitation as they pick our crops, sell us flowers and produce, and wash our dirty dishes in the hot kitchens of upscale restaurants. Those who control the wealth they produce would have us malign and distrust them; the powerful would always have us divert our frustration towards the powerless. But we are charged to resist such messages, and to remember that we too were strangers and slaves and must protect the strangers among us.

Because we were slaves in Egypt and now we are free, we keep this Watch Night for all the children of woman and man, dedicated to the Light of Freedom. While enjoying our portion of liberty, we must always remind ourselves that freedom is indivisible; there is no true freedom for any of us until all of us are free.

Michele Cox

Oh, I like that very much. Thank you for sharing it!

Carstonio

Did anyone else notice the irony of CPAC holding its event in a county where African-Americans make up the majority of residents, and where the Hispanic population is booming? Maybe they forgot to dig out their Tea Party guide to DC from from Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor rally. The one that advised scared white people to avoid the subway lines in that same county.

Lori

I found Beck’s advice hilarious. I was living in DC then and we all laughed about the fantasy world he was describing. (Because it was laugh or cry.) The Metro in DC is actually really safe and telling people to avoid it means throwing them on the mercy of expensive taxi service or scarce and expensive parking. And of course the taxi drivers are all AA, so Beck was advising nervous racists to avoid a public place where there would be some non-whites and instead put themselves alone in cars with AA men*. Um yeah Glenn, makes perfect sense.

The thing that strikes me about CPAC always being held in DC isn’t that bit of stupid though, it’s the contrast to what is more or less it’s Left analog, Netroots Nation. Netroots is held in a different city every year. The location selection is made with an eye to being accessible to as many people as possible over time. So, it’s on the east coast one year, down South another year, on the west coast another year. There is also at least some thought given to choosing places that can really benefit from the tourism dollars.

Both CPAC and Netroots are in a fundamental way about power and they’re both very clear about what power matters most to them.

*Note: The cab drivers are in far, far more danger from the passengers than the passengers are from them. My point is that anyone racist enough to avoid the Metro might feel differently about it. Although I guess that might be offset by the perception that the taxi driver is a servant, where on the Metro Those People are allowed to wander around like they own the place. /imitation racist.

http://apocalypsereview.wordpress.com/ Invisible Neutrino

I’m white and I actually *gasp* rode the DC subway. I was not mugged or accosted. I simply went about my day, admittedly, being somewhat annoyed by the heat and humidity :P

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